Compromising Positions, by Susan Isaacs (Jove, $3.95...

September 01, 1985|By Clarence Petersen.

Compromising Positions, by Susan Isaacs (Jove, $3.95). Some of you did not read this novel when I recommended it in 1979, and this is your last warning. The movie opened in Chicago Friday, and you know that seeing it will only ruin the book by giving away the ending. The novel is the seeming result of an Erica Jong-Joan Rivers collaboration on a Nancy Drew mystery, the mystery being who killed Dr. M. Bruce Fleckstein, periodontist and seducer who has photographed his conquests in compromising positions. Fleckstein also was a nerd, but Judith Singer, housewife, mother and perennial Ph.D. candidate, cares enough about his death to turn snoop. The result is a witty story full of narrative that does not translate easily into movie dialogue, such as:

``Scotty . . . was perfectly dressed (for Fleckstein`s funeral): a simple gray dress with white collar and cuffs. Everyone would know she was truly sorry but not one of the prime bereaved.``

The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, by Fay Weldon (Ballantine, $3.95).

``Mary Fisher,`` writes the protagonist, Ruth, ``is small and pretty and delicately formed, prone to fainting and weeping and sleeping with men while pretending she doesn`t. Mary Fisher is loved by my husband, who is her accountant. I love my husband and I hate Mary Fisher.`` Ruth, large, ungainly and homely, gets mad, and she also gets even. Oh, how she gets even in this delicious fantasy of sweet revenge--and not all at once but slowly, deliberately, with insidious cunning. Fisher, a rich and famous author of badly crafted romance novels, learns that the price of love can be exorbitant; Ruth`s husband, Bobbo, vain, selfish and boring, learns the meaning of sabotage and ruination. There are no nice people in this novel, not even Ruth`s wretched children (who also get theirs), and certainly not Ruth herself, a woman entirely lacking in pity or compassion--i.e., ruthless.

Texas Station, by Christopher Leach (Popular Library, $3.50). In the small Texas town of Blair, someone is killing the young folks and nobody knows who or why. Lucius Rumsey, an itinerate preacher comes to town and has the local carpenter build a 12-foot wooden cross, to which the carpenter`s son is later found lashed, his throat cut. Rumsey, who becomes the prime suspect, is thus forced to become a detective, following the grisly trail of broken bodies in a relentlessly grim, realistic and chilling story. ``Just the thing,`` said one reviewer, ``to satisfy a midsummer night`s bloodlust.``